John Anderson Joins The American League
But was he a jumper?
John Anderson Joins The American League
As I promised in this post, we’re going to take a look at players who might have jumped from the National League to the American prior to 1901. I don’t know if all of these guys jumped; that’s why we’re doing this research.
First up is John Anderson.
Now, the first thing you need to know about Anderson, before you look at anything else, is that his Baseball Reference page links to the wrong biography. This is his SABR biography. Baseball Reference will give you a broken link.
The second thing you need to know is that he wasn’t a jumper.
Anderson In The National League
John Anderson was no slouch. You can see that in his batting statistics:
Anderson routinely somewhere around .300. He wasn’t necessarily a master of drawing walks, but he did have a tendency to hit triples, leading the National League with 22 in 1898. That also helped him lead the league in slugging percentage, and put up a very respectable 140 OPS+.
The crazy thing about Anderson in 1898 is that he was on loan with Washington that season. From his SABR biography:
The old Washington Senators, one of the 4 vicitms of contraction, were not the victim of serial ownership, by the way. The club was owned by J. Earl Wagner and his brother George, and was apparently contracted after being league doormats for too long. From this SABR history:
Of course, the team would have had a hard time faring well when stars like Anderson were simply given back to other National League clubs for no compensation.
Anderson played well in 1899, but certainly was not the star of the show. And that’s when Connie Mack moved in on him.
Anderson In Milwaukee
Connie Mack purchased John Anderson outright for his Milwaukee Western League ballclub:
Of course, the Western League had been newly renamed as the American League. I’ve written earlier about the problem with considering the 1900 American League a “minor league,” and I strongly feel that Anderson’s presence in Milwaukee only strengthens my point. He was clearly a major league caliber player playing in his prime.
Connie Mack’s purchase of Anderson came just before the start of the 1900 season:
“Fulz” here refers to Dave Fultz, who we’ll cover later. Though Fultz never played for Brooklyn, it is true that he was under contract with Brooklyn following the contraction of the Baltimore Orioles in 1899. Reitz is Heinie Reitz, another player to add to our “jumper” list.
In his excellent three part biography of Connie Mack, Norman Macht mentions the Anderson transaction, however briefly:
Anderson, by the way, played very well in Milwaukee, and stayed in the American League for the remainder of his career. He remained a strong offensive player to the end:
Was He A Jumper?
No, Anderson was not a jumper.
However, he gives us a little bit more evidence that the 1900 American League really should be taken seriously by baseball historians and statisticians. Connie Mack didn’t sign a bunch of castoffs and has-beens for his Milwaukee team. He spent good money on good players at the prime of their careers.
Anderson did remain loyal to the American League for the rest of his career — an American League man to the end.